Sunday, June 30, 2013

August 1942. "Training in marksmanship helps girls at Roosevelt High School in Los Angeles develop into responsible women. Part of Victory Corps activities there, rifle practice encourages girls to be accurate in handling firearms. Practicing on the rifle range in the school's basement."

He wants me to reload some for him but hasn't a clue as to what bullet/powder combination he wants. Presumably he wants something that will work equally well on deer and two-legged varmints. Now he's a po boy and buying loaded rounds (even just projectiles) for him is out of the question, but it strikes me that having a mold that can cast .30-30 lead projectiles is not such a bad thing and I can always put the surplus back for the kids as trade goods for if, as and when. I've picked up a couple hundred pieces of .30-30 brass over the past few months at the range, but what bullet/powder combination would you .30-30 owners suggest?

The student threatened to report the sexual contact to the principal, according to the complaint, and Keesee threatened to tell her husband, Sherwood Police Officer Adam Keesee, about the relationship.

The complaint says Denise Keesee did tell her husband. Adam Keesee, according to the complaint, began harassing the student by pulling him over on traffic stops and pointing his firearm at the boy.

"In doing so, Officer Keesee actively attempted to prevent Plaintiff from coming forward to the police about what happened," the complaint says.

I am informed by email that a pro-Second Amendment Resolution was passed by unanimous acclamation at the Special Forces Association convention in San Antonio on 28 June 2013. LTC Robert K. Brown had requested John Frazer to draw it up back after the NRA convention. He states: "Bill Askins, former Marine Corps chopper pilot in Nam, former CIA agent in Nam, former NRA employee and son of Charlie Askins, played a significant role in getting this done. There were several hundred former and current Green Berets who supported the resolution."

I am trying to get a copy of this resolution now and will post it when I have it in hand.

American use ammunition that is so historically established, its continued use and legacy is ASSURED for American perpetuity. Buying anything else is simply shortchanging your posterity. (Unless you reload, OR stock in a LIFETIME supply of said ammunition, including training rounds.) Here we go...........

1. .22 LR

2. .38 special

3. .357 magnum

4. .45 ACP

5. .45 Colt

6. . 223 / 5.56 Nato

7. .30-.30

8. .30-.06

9. 7.62 x 39

10. .308 / 7.62 Nato

11. 20 gauge shotgun

12. 12 gauge shotgun

Oh, and for my friend who purchased a .45GAP pistol, I TOLD YOU SO.

I also won't discuss my friend who bought an MAS-49 rifle that shoots 7.5 x 54 French. Good luck.

I'll be on Michael W. Dean and Neema Vedadi’s The Freedom Feens radio show today, beginning at Noon Central. They tell me that some stations only carry The Freedom Feens on Saturdays, but here is a list of the stations that will broadcast live: Times are local for where the station is:

KYDT 103.1 FM. Sundance, WY. Sundays 7-9 PM.

KBFS 1450 AM. Rapid City, SD. Sundays 7-9 PM.

KDGO 1240 AM. Durango, CO. Sundays 3-5 PM.

WPBQ 1240 AM. Jackson, MS. Sundays live Noon-2 PM.

(Also, it will be up on their podcast page tomorrow night), and here is the streaming link I've been given.

Ought to be fun. From the pre-show questions they have asked, they are somewhat more doctrinaire in their libertarianism than I am.

Officers laid down a spike belt to stop anyone from attempting to drive past the blockade. That action sent the crowd of residents into a rage.

“What’s next? Tear gas?” shouted one resident.

“It’s just like Nazi Germany, just taking orders,” shouted another.

“This is the reason the U.S. has the right to bear arms,” said Charles Timpano, pointing to the group of Mounties.

Officers were ordered to fall back about an hour into the standoff in order to diffuse the situation and listen to residents’ concerns.

“We don’t want our town to turn into another New Orleans,” said resident Jeff Langford. “The longer that the water stays in our houses the worse it’s going to be. We’ll either be bulldozing them or burning them down because we’ve got an incompetent government.”

Mary Spring-Rice with Molly Childers, smuggling 900 German Mauser M1871 11 mm calibre single shot rifles and 29,000 rounds of blackpowder cartridges on board the Asgard, 1914. These rifles were later used in the Easter Rising of 1916 in Dublin.

Since arms were so necessary to make our organization a reality and to give to the minds of Irishmen menaced with the most outrageous threats a sense of security, it was our bounden duty to get arms before all else. . . But let me say that I am prouder to stand here today in the traitor's dock to answer this impeachment than to fill the place of my accusers. If there be no right of rebellion against a state of things that no savage tribe would endure without resistance, then am I sure that it is better for men to fight and die without right than to live in such a state of right as this.

Where all your rights become only an accumulated wrong; where men must beg with bated breath for leave to subsist in their own land, to think their own thoughts, to sing their own songs, to garner the fruit of their own labours - and even while they beg to see these things inexorably withdrawn from them - then surely it is a braver, a saner, and a truer thing to be a rebel in act and deed against such circumstances as this than tamely to accept it as the natural lot of men.

The old Prussian von Moltke was certainly right about battle plans. Sometimes they don't even survive contact with your FRIENDS.

Initially, I was invited by organizers of the 2nd Amendment Rally and March on 4 July in Westcliffe, CO as part of their annual festivities and July 4th Parade. There would be a march, a rally and I would get to speak. Also invited were Stewart Rhodes, Sheriff Mack and Larry Pratt. Then, almost immediately, we were disinvited and told that some of the leading lights of the resistance to the new Colorado law didn't want "outsiders" there.

This predated the controversy detailed here, and so reflected their own political estimation of the situation and not noisy collectivist opposition.

Other venues were sought for the week of 4 July and none could be found. Several other Coloradans with impeccable Second Amendment credentials expressed similar aversion to "outsiders." Yesterday, I received this from an attorney in Colorado:

There is pretty likely going to be civil disobedience by Coloradoans themsevles. People coming in from out of state would be extremely counterproductive. There's a strong and growing resentment to the magban being imposed by forces outside of Colorado--namely Bloomberg and Biden. Any civil disobedience would be far more likely to have a positive (or at least non-negative) impact on public opinion if it was done purely by Coloradoans.

Now, I AM welcome at the 1 July disobedience on the statehouse steps, where arrests are pretty much certain. That gives me three days to get there. And, thanks to reader's contributions, while I certainly have the magazines I am short on the money necessary to rent a car, and get there and back, without a co-driver. My plan had been to use my daughter Zoe as a co-driver but I was warned by two lawyers this week that she could be subject to arrest for aiding and abetting my disobedience. That I will not risk. So I decided yesterday I would drive myself if i could raise the vehicle money. I already have had offers of bail money and places to stay out there, but then there is Rosey.

My health has been pretty crappy this week, and I made the mistake of being honest with Rosey when I repeated what my doctor told me -- that he would prefer that I rested up for the surgery to glue me back together rather than go to Colorado just now. Yesterday was one of the worst days I've had in a while and Rosey, hitherto extremely supportive in everything I've done, is now convinced I won't survive arrest and jail at this time.

So, where does that leave me and my plans for Colorado? Well, that's what I'm asking you. Should I wait until after the first Colorado actions (and my surgery) and do some smuggling later this month when I am stronger and have a better chance of arranging a venue? Or should I just get on a bus tomorrow and go get arrested in Denver on 1 July? Either way, I WILL carry out a disobedience action in Colorado at some point. The question now is when. I would appreciate your input.

I told my daughters just last week that if they hear that Zimmerman has been acquitted, to get to a predetermined safe place IMMEDIATELY and stay there -- armed. My oldest often works her marketing job in rough parts of various cities, including Birmingham, Atlanta and even Houston. My youngest daughter's apartment is on the fringe of USM in Hattiesburg, butted up against another rough area. The racial divide promoted by the collectivists has become so poisonous that it is easy to see an LA riots outcome happening in this case -- all over the country. In any case, opportunistic criminals of every sort would seize on such a chance to commit their own favorite felony specialties in an atmosphere where the cops disappear and apprehension is highly unlikely.

Increasingly, this clash of alternate realities, of worldviews, grows and grows. We are divided by the question: Do the people serve the government, or does the government serve the people? This will not end well. As I have often observed in the past, collectivists view peace as the absence of effective opposition made possible by the imprisonment or death of their perceived enemies -- by the silence of dissenting voices however they achieve it. You do not negotiate an end to such a fight. You either win and remain free, or you lose and you and your children's children become slaves of the collective. Or you die in the fight. It is of supreme indifference to the collectivists how they win, as long as they win. They'll convince you (or your children) with propaganda if they can, but in the end they will kill you if they can't. We, on the other hand, have a much more difficult task. We must defend ourselves without becoming the monsters we claim to fight.

But have no illusions. This is a war of worldviews as old as human history.

The Hidden Hitler is the English-language version of the 2001 book Hitlers Geheimnis. Das Doppelleben eines Diktators (Hitler's Secret: The Double Life of a Dictator) by German-Jewish professor and historian Dr. Lothar Machtan. The original book was published in Germany by Alexander Fest Verlag, while the English-translated version was published by Basic Books in New York City. (ISBN 0-465-04308-9)

The book discusses Adolf Hitler's sexuality. Machtan argues that Hitler was a closeted homosexual. Among the evidence, it cites the allegedly homoerotic nature of his friendship with August Kubizek during Hitler's youth in Vienna.

The question of Hitler's homosexuality is also raised in Walter C. Langer's pioneering work The Mind of Adolf Hitler and in Waite's psychoanalytic history The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler. -- Wikipedia.

And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. -- Joshua 24:15.

Black-robed thug Judge Eric H. O'Briant, currently a fugitive from the Law of Unintended Consequences.

I would like to refer these thugs in uniforms and black robes to Joshua 24:15 with the comment that you can't be a successful fugitive from justice under the Law of Unintended Consequences. It WILL catch up with you sooner or later.

"On a personal note, I find it interesting that over six years after I posted the Wintemute warning, he’s still bringing it up as evidence of the troubles he’s seen. Knowing that has resulted in my living in this guy’s head rent-free for all these years is pretty unbelievable."

"Yet the poor fellows think they are safe! They think that the war is over! Only the dead have seen the end of war." -- Santayana's "Soliloquies in England," Soliloquy #25, "Tipperary" (Scribners, 1924, p. 102)

These innocents no longer have to worry about anything. They have inherited "a future free from gun violence."

David Codrea links to this piece of CSGV bilge: “I know I for one will never touch a firearm again.” Readers will recall that CSGV is the premier open advocacy group for a government monopoly of violence in this country. When I went to the link I was struck once more by the banner sentiment at the top of their site: "Imagine a Future Free from Gun Violence." Of course the sick truth behind this lie is that the only thing CSGV objects to is the people having the means and the right to resist their "government monopoly of violence." Santayana was right. Only the dead have seen the end of war -- or of tyranny, for that matter. So, until the Second Coming, you'd better be prepared to meet these practitioners of a "government monopoly of violence" with the only thing they understand and will respond to -- countervailing force. Got militia?

Couldn't resist this photoshop a good friend forwarded to me. It's what might happen one day if Pelosi's inner soul actually bursts through her heavy make-up. My apologizes for any of you who lost their breakfasts or their keyboards.

I may be breaking a confidence here, but the fact of the matter is that between the bastards at Examiner who keep jacking around their citizen journalists by cutting their pay-per-view and the failure (out of oversight or, in some cases, such as Drudge and the NRA, apparent pure animus) to link David's important work, he is now seeking work in the private sector. He will no longer be able to keep going with an economic model that is apparently a failure. And when he does find another job, he will not have the time to pursue important stories like Fast and Furious, the Reese family, etc. This is a tragedy and a damn shame on those of us who have not done what we can to share David's links with the wider world. You don't have to send him money, in fact he will refuse it or, if non-returnable, give it to charity. What he needs is for y'all to support his work by sharing his Examiner links. Please.

Again, it's not easy to conjure up any sympathy for "King Salim Habazz," or to be very upset about his removal from the streets, but if his making himself more difficult to shoot to death is to be considered grounds for suspicion of a crime worthy of suspending the Bill of Rights, why should any of us consider ourselves immune to the same abuses?

NBC "Meet the Press" host David Gregory got a rise out of Glenn Greenwald on Sunday by asking the Guardian reporter why he shouldn't be charged with a crime for having "aided and abetted" former National Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden.

Greenwald replied on the show Sunday that it was "pretty extraordinary that anybody who would call themselves a journalist would publicly muse about whether or not other journalists should be charged with felonies." . . .

During his interview with NBC's Gregory, Greenwald declined to discuss where Snowden was headed. That refusal seemed to prompt Gregory to ask: "To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn't you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?"

Greenwald said Gregory was embracing the Obama administration's attempt to "criminalize investigative journalism," citing an FBI agent's characterization of Fox News journalist James Rosen as a probable co-conspirator of a State Department contractor who was suspected of leaking classified information to Rosen. Rosen was not charged.

"If you want to embrace that theory, it means that every investigative journalist in the United States who works with their sources, who receives classified information is a criminal, and it's precisely those theories and precisely that climate that has become so menacing in the United States," said Greenwald

Metadata with GPS locations, for example, can trace a teenage girl to an abortion clinic or a patient to a psychiatrist’s office, said Karen Reilly, the development director for The Tor Project, a U.S.-based nonprofit that produces technology to provide online anonymity and circumvent censorship.

Metadata can even identify a likely gun owner, she said.

“Never mind background checks, if you bring your cellphone to the gun range you probably have a gun,” Reilly said.

“People don’t realize all the information that they’re giving out,” she said. “You can try to secure it – you can use some tech tools, you can try to be a black hole online – but if you try to live your life the way people are expecting it, it’s really difficult to control the amount of data that you’re leaking all over the place.”

A former senior official of the National Security Agency said the government’s massive collection of metadata allowed the agency to construct “maps” of an individual’s daily movements, social connections, travel habits and other personal information.

“This is blanket. There is no constraint. No probable cause. No reasonable suspicion,” said Thomas Drake, who worked unsuccessfully for years to report privacy violations and massive waste at the agency to his superiors and Congress.

Metadata “is more useful than (the) content” of a telephone call, email or Internet search, Drake said in an interview. “It gets you a map over time. I get to map movements, connections, communities of interest. It’s also a tracking mechanism.”

"Everyone is very aware of the fact that Ramadan begins next month and that there will be a large, large movement of people in a small crowded spaces," said Gregory Hartl, a spokesman for the WHO. "So the more we know about this virus before that starts the better."

There are also concerns that tourists could bring the virus back to their home countries. It appears to have an incubation period of up to 12 days and a fatality rate of 60 per cent. . . There are currently no known treatments. Margaret Chan, WHO director-general, previously called MERS a “threat to the entire world”.

"Seditionist hate groups." Where have I heard that before? My response, which is "awaiting moderation."

"Free the ATF?" Interesting experiment in alternate collectivist reality. You perhaps have heard of the Law of Unintended Consequences? Starting a bloody civil war seems a bit counterproductive to your plans and to the safety of the society you wish to foist them upon. I understand that collectivism is nothing but an appetite for other people's liberty, property and lives but just how many of us "bitter clingers" are you willing to see dead in order to enforce your plans for more citizen disarmament? A million? Two? Ten? Think hard, and think now — before that process server from the Law of Unintended Consequences shows up at your door with the butcher's bill.

Thursday, June 20, 2013

A personal note to the two former residents of Dennis Avenue who I know read this blog. Do us all a favor and don't rat me out on this post. I'm going to be speaking frankly and she doesn't need the worry.

In Colorado, not all the Nazis are in the state legislature and the governor's mansion. Some pick up the trash along the roads (and not in a chain gang, unfortunately).

Along with all the defeatist claptrap troll responses to We Are Expendable, bleating about "every day the bluefor gets stronger and the redfor gets weaker" (sounds a lot like the collectivists' "resistance is futile" meme, doesn't it?) there came a somewhat different response to my latest post on Colorado. Old Greybeard writes:

Since you will be flagrantly violating a Colorado "law", and they will want to make an example of you, what makes you think you will get bail, since surely you would be considered a flight risk?

Also, all those magazines will be totally wasted. You might as well just mail them to the Colorado state police because those guys will wind up using them someday or they will just be destroyed after being used as evidence against you.

That's the biggest reason I haven't sent you any magazines. PLEASE CHANGE YOUR MIND ABOUT THIS FOLLY. There are other ways to support the Second Amendment. For example, being able to continue updating your blog every day, my friend. - Old Greybeard

Now I smiled when I read this because I know Old Greybeard. I know where his heart is. And though we disagree on some things, I am proud to call him a friend. He is motivated, I am certain, only out of concern for me. But he raises several issues -- some serious -- that I think need to be explained.

First, no, OGB, those magazines won't be wasted. I'll only have one in my hand or in my vehicle if/when I am arrested in Denver. The others, I assure you, will not be wasted. My daughter Zoe will be my driver/videographer for the trip and will not participate in the action. The charge is a misdemeanor. I am not a flight risk. I will have local counsel already arranged and, if the readership comes through when I issue the call, bail money in somebody's pocket.

In some measure, this is an undiscovered country I knew I was headed to when I founded the Three Percent movement. When you draw a line that you declare is a last ditch, you either defend it or risk violating your principles and discrediting your entire life.

I never sought to be a leader of anything. The unfortunate thing for me is that other people thought I was a leader. You know, when I was first picked to lead my Alabama militia unit (we didn't even have a name for it back then), I was perplexed. I had been in Alabama since 1985. I knew about the difference between "Yankees" and "Damyankees." I had married a southern girl and stayed. Ten years afterward, whenever I'd go up to Winston County to interview descendants of Alabama Unionists, I'd still get some old lady leaning forward into my face with a piercing gaze and challenging, "Y'all ain't from aroun' heer, air ya?" And I always had to admit that I wasn't.

So finally, one day, I asked the other guys in the militia, "How come you picked me? I mean, I'm a 'Damyankee.' Why are you trusting me?" There was an uncomfortable silence and finally, with a wry grin, one of the boys said, "Well, hell, Mike. You ARE a Yankee. If we put you out front and you get killed, we ain't lost nothin'." The room exploded in laughter. Which, I reflected, sort of told me where I stood. And it WAS funny.

But the thing about being a leader is that you have the responsibility, the DUTY, to LEAD. As one comment to the transcript of my Hartford speech said: "By sticking your neck out and taking action, hopefully the people of CT will have an example to follow and won't feel fear now that someone else has already done it."

And that's one aspect of leadership. A leader doesn't ask his people to do anything that he isn't willing to do himself, and, by his example, he inspires others.

The other thing is that I don't know how long I'm going to be able to keep this -- all this, including the blog -- up and running. True, with my weight loss of 135 pounds since the surgery both my blood pressure and my diabetes are doing much better. My previously infected toe on my right foot is now healed and as of yesterday I am back with shoes on both my feet again for the first time in months. But I still have congestive heart failure (if I ever get tased it will probably kill me right there) and the nagging aftermath of the surgery is that hole in my back that continues to leak. In fact the past three days it has gotten far worse, and now seems to be infected according to the two different doctors (and their co-pays) that I visited yesterday. We're having to change the dressings four to five times a day. Oh, they've prescribed an antibiotic and I'm taking that but this up and down stuff gets to be more than a bit wearing. Then there's Churchill's black dog that seems to make a reappearance every time I turn to Absolved to try to finish it.

On the bright side, the surgeon yesterday came up with yet another idea to plug the hole in my gastric-esophogeal junction by means of a state-of-the-art human epoxy glue. When I get back from Colorado, I will enter the hospital (they have to keep me NPO yet hydrated by means of IVs while the glue is setting up) and we will give it a shot. The funny thing is that this glue is mostly used to repair anal fistulas and when the doc told me THAT I laughed myself half to death. When he asked what was so funny I said, "You know, Doc, there is a considerable body of opinion including my ex-wife and Eric Holder, that I am an asshole. I guess this proves it."

Still, I'm skating on the the thin ice of multiple threats to my health not including my ex-wife's voodoo doll or Eric Holder's collectivist animus. I know that, statistically speaking, after all I've been through I shouldn't be here, leading me to conclude that God is not done with me yet. So I do what I can, while I can. It is after all, what He has commanded all of us stiff-necked Christians to do -- which is to stand in the gap. The thing is, when you get closer to the end than the beginning, you begin to realize your own body's mortality and you want to make whatever time you have left count. The other thing is, if you're a Christian, you understand that they cannot take away or compromise your own inextinguishable soul, only you can do that. So, if you stay true to your faith, the worst thing that happens is that you go to a better place where your side wins in the end.

OGB, God love him (and He does), believes that to be so much fairy dust. Well, maybe it is. We'll all find out sooner than we want to rather than later, given the world we live in. But the fact of the matter is that I DO believe it. It is a part of who I am, and to quote another flawed Christian, Martin Luther, "Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders, Gott helfe mir, Amen." ("Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me.")

The thing is, I believe I wouldn't be here without the prayerful support of my readers. This is spiritual warfare we are engaged in people, with the best evidence of that being the absolute, blood-thirsty evil of our collectivist enemies and their appetites for our liberty, our property and our lives. How can you look at Waco and not see the evil hand behind it? How can you consider the vicious, sustained campaign by the federal "law enforcement" bureaucracy to victimize the Reese family without hearing the Devil himself laugh in the background? These people who seek to enslave us are evil. It may be a banal evil, to use Hannah Arendt's phrase, but IT IS EVIL bureaucratized and yet personified all at once and together. So, viewed through the lens of my own principles, I AM expendable. It is what God put me on this earth to do -- fight evil with all my heart and soul until He calls me home.

No one thought that the authorities of your state would pass laws making criminals out of the previously law-abiding -- but they did. If they catch you violating their unconstitutional laws, they will -- when they please -- send armed men to work their will upon you. And people -- innocent of any crime save the one these tyrants created -- will die resisting them. -- Mike Vanderboegh, Hartford CT, 20 April 2013.

Why Colorado? Because that is where the collectivist enemy is. That is one place where he has made gains that need to be confronted. It seems that we have turned back the federal grab that the citizen disarmament blood dancers began after Newtown, much to their frustration. But it is the states where they continue to gain ground. So, we must confront them as they confront us -- state by state, jurisdiction by jurisdiction, using all the tools at hand. As my good friend David Codrea says, "Any chair in a bar fight." Even those who urge me not to go concede the truth that the Colorado tyranny must be resisted. We must confront these collectivist bastards in Colorado and every other state where they've made gains. My friends and supporters, OGB included, just don't want it to be ME. But if not me, who? And if not now, when?

There is one way you might stop me from going. Just don't send me any more subscription donations. Without the money for car rental and gas, without the bail money, I'm dead in the water, so to speak. As generous as y'all have been, if the PO Box remains empty as it was this week, I'll be reduced to hitchhiking. So you can vote with your wallets. Should I stay or should I go? I'm tempted to say it's up to y'all, but that would be a lie. I'm going. Somehow, God will provide. But I'm going. I love OGB like a brother, but I'm going.

I generally (try to) read your site through the RSS feed, so I can carry the essays with me and peruse them at my leisure. However, recently, many your feed entries have been just the "Doctrine of the Three Percent", with no text. The last actual post I got was the 14th of June entry on the Peggy Noonan article. All the article titles show up in the feed just fine, and the preview of the article is there, but opening the article just shows the Doctrine. Feeds from other sites seem to be coming in fine, so I'm suspecting something is getting chewed up by whatever software creates your RSS feed updates.

The bill being crafted by Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) would allow for the ATF’s functions to be shifted to another agency, such as the FBI, effectively bypassing the need for the Senate to confirm a director of the embattled bureau.

“It strikes me that if the Senate has not confirmed the head of an agency as important as this, after a certain period of time, that we should transfer the jurisdiction of that agency to the FBI for example, which has a long-term director,” Durbin told The Hill.

Riiight. First, they wouldn't be able to get it past the House and second, the FBI will make sure it never happens because they don't want the mission. The J.Edgar files would come out to defend themselves from that tar baby.

Well, folks, we've made our minimum of 100 on the magazines to smuggle into Colorado -- and then some. The generosity of my readers never ceases to amaze me. Along with magazines, I've received brass and even bullets to enhance my reloading efforts in the same boxes, and of course voluntary donations for gas and expenses. God bless you all.

The problem is that as yet the plan for distributing them has yet to come together. There is a civil disobedience already planned for Custer County on the 4th, but we are given to understand (after an initial invitation by organizers) that they "don't want outsiders" there, Custer County would be a great place to do it because the sheriff there is one of the ones who has signed onto the lawsuit against the intolerable act, and says he won't enforce it, so politically it would be a two-fer. Since I'm going to be out in Colorado anyway, I may cover the event for Sipsey Street because the civil disobedience is news in and of itself.

The other possibility is a 1 July civil disobedience planned for the statehouse steps in Denver, but I am awaiting more information on that. This action, planned on Facebook, is described this way:

1- This isn't a political rally. There will be no guest speakers sound systems mc's or dj's. The time for talking about action is over. This is about willful civil disobedience on the doorstep of those who feign to be our rulers.

2-this is a protest of the new state law. As it is being done in Denver, I suggest everyone bring or exchange magazines that come as close to the 15 round unit as possible while still going over.

3- There is a real possibility of arrest here. with that in mind, I don't recommend bringing mags you cant afford to lose, and i do not recommend carrying."

The organizer is Ryan Tuleja and I am waiting for some more info from him. Previously I had been persuaded by Colorado friends that doing anything in Denver was more than problematic if the crowd numbers were not there. If I'm going to certainly be arrested (as seems to be Tuleja's plan for himself), I don't need a hundred magazines, just one. Perhaps it will be possible to do all three -- participate in the 1 July action in Denver, get bailed out of jail (assuming the bail money can be raised), cover the 4 July action in Custer County AND smuggle in the 100 magazines (with suitable press coverage).

Today is the anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, which as we all know was actually fought on Breed's Hill.

Recently my friend Stewart Rhodes sent me a copy of Bunker Hill -- A City, A Siege, a Revolution by Nathaniel Philbrick. It is, in short sentence, the best single work I've ever read on the battle, its prelude (including the Stamp Act, the Boston Massacre, the Tea Party, the Powder Alarm and Lexington and Concord) as well as its aftermath.

I most especially recommend it to those generally anonymous posters who quibble with my policy of "No Fort Sumters" and who dispute my contention that the Founders were smart men who understood the necessity of goading the Crown forces into firing first, thereby forcing them to cede the moral high ground to the forces of liberty. They did, in fact, leave us a template for future action to defend the Republic they bequeathed us. Even when they engaged in street violence, these were conservative men who sought to control events with the Boston mob. Their responses to British provocations were measured -- and maddening -- to both the Crown and the Tories:

The appearance of Joyce Junior (MBV: a masked mob leader who actually was the 26 year old son of Harvard professor John Winthrop and descended from THE Winthrops who had founded Massachusetts Bay Colony) in January 1774 appears to have been part of an effort by patriot leaders to control the aftermath of the Tea Party. Unwieldy mob eruptions such as the one that provoked the Boston Massacre inevitably made for bad publicity in both America and England. In an effort to depict the destruction of East India tea as an act of principle rather than of rage, the Tea Party had been minutely choreographed from the start. Joyce Junior was continuing this attempt to channel if not contain the violence.

So, on this anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, get this book and sift its many lessons from the Founders. You will, I think, come to understand that the Founders themselves would have embraced the principle of "No Fort Sumters."

Boehner ally Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), a key member of the Appropriations Committee, told The Hill that postponing the debt-limit fight makes it more difficult for appropriators to move their spending bills before the summer recess. . .

With the GOP-controlled House and the Democratic-controlled Senate so far apart on their respective budgets, Boehner will have to negotiate spending levels while also dealing with the very real possibility of a government shutdown in the fall.

Since Republicans took over the House in 2011, the majority party has had a difficult time garnering a majority of the fiscally conservative conference to support spending bills, let alone more divisive matters such as immigration.

Still, Simpson believes that Boehner intends to let the House “work its will” on the measures even if it means relying on Democratic votes to carry the majority of support for those bills.

“When you are Speaker, you aren't just Republican Speaker, you are Speaker of the whole House and you need to do what's best for the whole House sometimes that might mean a majority of Democrats and minority of Republicans that pass a bill,” Simpson said.

Others disagree. Conservatives on and off Capitol Hill are urging Boehner to embrace the “Hastert rule,” which is named after former Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). The rule stipulates that no bill can come to the House floor unless it has the backing of a majority of House Republicans.

Some Republicans don’t think that is necessary.

“The important thing is to pass something on immigration so we can go to conference with the Senate,” Simpson noted.

Foreign politicians and officials who took part in two G20 summit meetings in London in 2009 had their computers monitored and their phone calls intercepted on the instructions of their British government hosts, according to documents seen by the Guardian. Some delegates were tricked into using internet cafes which had been set up by British intelligence agencies to read their email traffic.

Sunday, June 16, 2013

It took David Codrea to remind me, but I'll be on Kate Krueger's Talking Guns radio show at 1:30 Arizona time (3:30 Central, 4:30 Eastern) this afternoon on Independent Talk 1100 KFNX in the Phoenix listening area. You can also listen via live streaming.

Saturday, June 15, 2013

The following piece was originally posted on Sipsey Street 8 December 2008 entitled We Are Expendable, Or, "Giving battle, but on different terms." Some recent conversations with folks who argue that I should not proceed with the armed civil disobedience campaign because I might get arrested or killed reminded me of it. Just like anyone else in this fight, I am expendable. I can only hope the trade-off is worth it.

We Are Expendable

"You don't understand," said the young naval officer, "we were expendable." He was very earnest as he lolled on the bunk of the officers' quarters of the torpedo station at Newport, along with the other three officers who had also just got out of the Philippines. I admitted I didn't understand.

"Well, it's like this. Suppose you're a sergeant machine-gunner, and your army is retreating and the enemy advancing. The captain takes you to a machine gun covering the road, 'You're to stay here and hold this position,' he tells you. 'For how long?' you ask. 'Never mind,' he answers, 'just hold it.' Then you know you're expendable. In a war, anything can be expendable -- money or gasoline or equipment or most usually men. They are expending you and that machine gun to get time. They expect you to stay there and spray that road with steel until you're killed or captured, holding up the enemy for a few minutes or even a precious quarter of an hour.

"You know the situation -- that those few minutes gained are worth the life of a man to your army. So you don't mind it. . ." -- They Were Expendable, W.L. White, 1942

In the interests of clarification of what Three Percenters stand for, I present the piece of mine below, Resolve, from last month. I would also like to add this little preface to it.

We have been called "insurrectionists" by the prags (among other things). Insurrection, in case you were wondering, is defined as "an act or instance of rising in revolt, rebellion, or resistance against civil authority or an established government." The key word here, and the action which our opponents wish to impute to us is "rising." As in the Irish Easter Rising of 1916. That is, the unilateral assault of revolutionary forces upon a government at the time and places of the insurrectionists' choosing.

If you read Resolve, you wll see that this is not what I have in mind, summed up in the injunction, "No Fort Sumters."

The prags allege that our strategy is flawed, either because we will lose political legitimacy by attacking first, or setting ourselves up for failure by sitting in our houses and letting ourselves be picked off one by one. Both of course are wrong.

Our model is rather Lexington and Concord. The British marched out, not intending to start a war but merely to carry out a lightning strike as they had during the Powder Alarm of 1774 and to be back in Boston before the "provincials" could react. They also intended to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock along the way.

No one knows who fired the first shot. It could have been someone from either side. The Lexington militia under Captain John Parker were certainly not given any order to fire and it is a matter of historical fact that the British officers lost control of their troops. In any case, the blame fell to the British because they had come to the home turf of the provincials.

Parker's injunction to his troops is our own as well, "Don't fire unless fired upon." The British had a choice that April morning. The road forked and the Lobsters could have ignored the militia and marched down the left fork, without a confrontation. The vanguard chose the right fork and found, and later lost, a war.

But after the British onslaught and the militia "unassed the a.o." as they say in certain quarters today, the colonials were treated to British cheers and an 800 musket volley of celebration. As David Hackett Fischer described it in Paul Revere's Ride:

In the houses and woods along the road, the people of Lexington listened bitterly to the British cheers and began to count their dead. seven Lexington men had been killed and also one of the Yankee prisoners taken on the road, the unlucky Woburn man who was shot while "trying to escape." Nine other Lexington men were wounded, some severely. The toll was heavy in that small town. Eight pairs of fathers and sons had mustered on the Common. Five of those eight were shattered by death. Most families in that small community suffered the loss of a kinsman -- if not a father or son, then an uncle or cousin.

As the British troops disappeared into the west, the people of the town gathered on the Common. There was at first a sense of shock, a terrible numb and empty feeling of cruel and bitter loss. Then there was another raw emotion: deep, consuming, abiding anger. The people of Lexington asked themselves, who were these arrogant men in their proud red coats? By what right did they act as they did?

Other militiamen were now arriving from the far corners of the town. Those who had slept through the alarm began to appear, weapons in hand. Captain Parker mustered his company once again on the bloody ground. There were not sixty militia as before, but twice that number. The men were silent, grim and pensive. Most had lost friends and relatives only a few minutes before. Some wore bloody bandages. A few had faces and shirts blackened by powder stains. Their weapons were no better than before, but they replenished their ammunition from the dwindling store in the meetinghouse.

This time there were no consultations of debates. With a few terse words of command, Captain Parker ordered his company to fall in. The men were no longer in doubt about what to do. They were ready to give battle again, BUT ON DIFFERENT TERMS. (Emphasis supplied, MBV.)

The unlucky militiamen who were killed at the first fire of the British and in the headlong rush to get away by British bayonets, were, to use the phrase of the torpedo boat officer, "expendable." They were expendable by accident, for they certainly didn't intend to get shot that morning while merely standing in formation. But they were expendable by necessity as well.
They had to die at the first, there on Lexington Green, so that all their countrymen would know from that point on that it was a war of defense against Crown tyranny. They had to recieve the first fire, and they did.

And this is what the prags do not understand about us Three Percenters. We view ourselves as expendable. We don't want to. On the whole, as Mark Twain's candidate for the hanging said, if it weren't for the honor of the thing we'd rather skip it. Yet we know that someone must go first. Whoever it is will be chosen by our enemies, by the enemies of liberty and the Constitution, and not by ourselves. By taking the position that we do, it is not that we volunteer for suicide. We merely understand that to have principles means that eventually you cannot back away from them. Eventually, someone has to stand. And, in the nature of things, someone must be first. Like the machine-gunner at the crossroads, we can only hope that the sacrifice will not have been in vain.

And then, like Captain Parker's Minutemen, those of us who are still standing after the first fire will be ready, in overwhelming numbers, to give battle again, but on different terms -- Our terms. And on our terms, we will restore the Founders' Republic. If our opponents do wish to go here, they should take the other fork in the road. Or, better yet, stay in Boston.

So, for those of you who missed it the first time, or were a bit hazy about what I meant when you did, kindly read "Resolve."

Well, yes, thank you. But revolution against what? Overturning what? The name-calling, nervous-nellie opposition bloggers within the dyspeptic "Second Amendment community" have been accusing us Three Precenters of seeking a revolution. My thanks to Rep. Lewis for reminding us that the revolutionists, Gramscian and otherwise, are on the collectivist side of this argument, thus proving my point that we are in fact Restorationists.

All we seek is the restoration of the Founder's Republic.

Death Knell: "The masks are going to come off."

There is of course much wailing and gnashing of teeth amongst the "pragmatists" about the utter failure of their politics. Indeed, as I know from personal emails, there is even despair and some panic in some of my fellow Three Percenters. I am grateful to my good e-friend "thedweeze" for forwarding this commentary from Perry de Havilland in London.

It says much of what I was going to say and does it more clearly and with fewer words.

Unlike many, well, most of my compatriots, I am not filled with a deep sense of gloom and foreboding at the prospect of the most left wing president since FDR gaining the White House. In truth, I can see many reasons to think it may well be a far better outcome than if a Big State Republican like McCain won.

Of course Obama will bring an avalanche of policies that will be truly appalling and quite wicked, of that I have no doubt, much like his predecessors in office in that respect. As the global economy continues to come unglued, everything Obama does to deal with the mounting crises will I fact make things worse. Civil liberties will be hammered, all in the name of 'fairness', and the flood of regulations pertaining to every aspect of economic life will grow into a drowning ocean.

And that is actually the good news.

Why? Because in truth the Republicans under John "I support the bailout" McCain would scarcely have done much better. The economic global meltdown is only just starting to roll: if you think the sub-prime mortgage crisis was the biggie, just wait until you see the fallout from the fun and frolics of the impending mess in other areas, such as debt swaps. This is all going to get worse, a lot worse, and Obama is going to do absolutely everything to dig the holes deeper. Looking back on this period ten to twenty years from now, the Republicans crying into their beer tonight will be saying "thank Christ it was not us in office then".

The lesser evil is not going to win this time and much as it may not seem that way now... or any time soon I suspect... in the long run this has a far far better chance of leading to the rebirth of a genuine pro-liberty, pro-market political culture that the gradual incremental surrender of recent times made impossible.

Many will find the glee of the statist left over the next few days and weeks hard to endure, but to be honest I have been walking around with a grin all day. Finally the era of gradualism is over and the masks are going to come off. The USA has voted for statism and it is going to get exactly what it voted for at a juncture in history where it will very quickly be impossible to hide the cost of those votes.

Obama is not the start of a new era - he is the death knell for the old one.

I agree, although I hasten to add the little prayer, "From his mouth to God's ears."

"Entering the Grey Zone"

Some of you might think that de Havilland and I are engaging in pollyannaish wishful thinking given the crisis we are about to face. However, it is not only gunnies of various stripes who are panicked at the thought of an Obama presidency.

An old friend of mine called me the other day to report that an FBI agent in the west had confessed his fears at church last Sunday. Obama, he worried aloud, was going to shove him and his agency where he did not wish to go. They were, he feared, "entering the grey zone." Now there is more than one way to interpret those words, but he made one thing explicit. He had zero interest in dying for the cause of gun confiscation. No doubt such thoughts are flickering through many minds in the federal law enforcement bureaucracy at this moment.

This is something for us Three Percenters to keep in mind. He fears the scenario of my novel "Absolved."

You know, "Absolved" is but the first of a trilogy. I will make a tiny news ripple here by saying that the titles of the follow-on books are "Resolved" and "Dissolved." As with everything else I write, this is grounded in the history of the Founding generation.

On 7 June 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia presented a three-part resolution to Congress, which read in part:

RESOLVED, that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are ABSOLVED from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally DISSOLVED.

As a scribbler, I love the English language. We use one word in so many different ways and having so many different meanings that they become elements of logical poetry - sometimes illogical poetry if you believe any of my many critics.

Take the word "resolve."

Here are some definitions of 'resolve' on the Web:

- decide: bring to an end; settle conclusively; as in "The case was decided"

- conclude: reach a conclusion after a discussion or deliberation

- purpose: reach a decision; as in "he resolved never to be fooled again"

- answer: understand the meaning of; as in "The question concerning the size of Senator Schumer's ego cannot be answered"

- make clearly visible; as in "can this image be resolved?"

- find the solution; as in "solve an equation"

- resoluteness: the trait of being resolute; as in "his resoluteness carried him through the battle"

Resoluteness, purpose, decision, visibility, solution. These are multiple meanings but each has black-and-white clarity.

And make no mistake, it is our resolve which will carry us through "the grey zone." Let others doubt. We Three Percenters must not. We must be purposeful, resolute and decisive, even when the "pragmatists" are running around like chickens with their heads cut of, or slumping disconsolately in the corner as if someone pulled the plug on their video game.

No "Fort Sumters"

My Wolverine Grandpa used to say, 'When in peril or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout." He usually said it ironically when someone nearby was doing exactly that. He also would offer, "It might help if he flapped his arms." This is what is happening in many corners of our nation today, and it is exactly and precisely what we must not do.

Here, I think, is what we must do:

1. "Take not counsel of your fears." In the coming period many rumors will sweep the blogosphere. Imminent danger will perceived from a million different directions. But here is how we should conduct ourselves.

"Wilson, I'm a damned sight smarter man than Grant; I know more about organization, supply and administration and about everything else than he does, but I'll tell you where he beats me and where he beats the world. He don't care a damn for what the enemy does out of his sight but it scares me like hell." -- William Tecumseh Sherman as recalled by James Harrison Wilson, in Under the Old Flag.

Now Sherman wasn't saying that Grant should fail to seek through intelligence-gathering or scouting what the dispositions and the intentions of the enemy were. He was saying that you don't let your fears affect how you fight the enemy in front of you. Sherman also recalled that Grant worried less about what the enemy was going to do him and more about what HE was going to do the the enemy. As Three Percenters, we must only react to what we see and know and not some rumored threat. Above all, we must not lose our cool. We must always remain under control, and ready.

2. Work on the credibility of your deterrence. Deterrence only works if it's credible. We must ready ourselves for whatever comes. That means training, physical fitness, building up logistical bases, more training, marksmanship competence, organization, more logistics, more training.

We have our enemy's promises that they will negate any possibility of our using the standard methods of politics against them. They have won the "majority vote" decision.

Fine.

But if we are to avoid conflict, we must convince them of how little this actually buys them in the way of power. We do that by building up the armed citizenry, one three-man buddy team, one six-man fire team and one squad at a time. Don't advertise. Friends and neighbors will do nicely.

And remember, you're doing this in case the deterrence doesn't work. This is as real as it gets, folks.

Act like it.

3. No "Fort Sumters." This means exactly and precisely what it says. We must not fire first.

Neither were the leaders of the Confederacy eager to start a war. Jefferson Davis and his cabinet, sitting in their offices in Montgomery (Alabama), much preferred to negotiate until they got their way. They always had, after all. In fact, Southerners in general considered Northerners to be incapable of standing up to them. They had seceded thinking the North would "just let them go." Should it come to civil war they were confident that the great European powers, desperately needing cotton for their mills, would intervene on the side of the Confederacy. The one possibility the South never considered was the one that actually happened: that the North would actually fight an all out civil war rather than let the Union be shattered and that England and France would not come to the aid of the South. Lincoln's adroit handling of the matter left Montgomery with few choices. If they attacked Fort Sumter, they'd lose both their moral high ground and their Northern allies. -- Joe Wheeler, Abraham Lincoln, Howard Books, 2008

We don't fire first, nor second, nor perhaps even third. This does not mean we can't defend ourselves. We must.

What it does mean is that the rest of don't react until everyone understands that it is collective self-defense. We must not cede the moral high ground.

If the Confederacy had not fired on Sumter, what would Lincoln have done? Whatever it was would have cost him the moral high ground and political legitimacy. And for the brave new world of imperial presidency that he was embarked upon, that might have led to an entirely different result. Division in the North, perhaps even impeachment. It is our enemies who are the revolutionists and the aggressors.

Take a stand on familiar ground and their appetites will do the rest. They will come to us. Just be ready. Then when it is apparent, ACT, at once and collectively, on familiar ground of our own choosing and in enlightened self-defense on a large scale seeking only the criminally culpable.

Which brings me to another component of the moral high ground:

4. And no OKC Bombings. The terrorist bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building on 19 April 1995 was more than the operation of "lone wolf" McVeigh, but I am not here to argue that largely undiscovered history.

Even if we accept the FBI explanation for it (and I do not), McVeigh targeted a building filled with non-combatants including a day care full of babies that could be plainly seen from the street or in a cursory reconnaissance of the building. It was simple terrorism and was used by the Clintonistas to discredit all their enemies, up to and including Rush Limbaugh.

So here's a warning for all you people who are seduced by the dialectic of 'The Turner Diaries'.

If you claim to fight monsters, it is important not to become one yourself. And I say to my fellow sheepdogs, that if you find someone who claims to be one of us turning feral, rip his throat out. This is the latest installment of the eternal struggle between sheepdogs and wolves.

Sheepdogs do not prey on sheep. They kill wolves.

Keep the difference firmly in mind.

5. Be patient. The raids do not begin tomorrow. It will take some time for the new regime to begin to suck up its courage, lay the "legal" predicate for its unconstitutional actions, tighten its grip and begin to squeeze.

We still have time to prepare, recruit, organize, train.

If, that is, we have resolve.

As a good old friend of mine just reminded me, this is not new. Like the Israelites, the American people have asked for a King and one has been given to them.

But I recall that the Founders went into battle, crying "No King but Jesus!" My agnostic and libertarian friends would doubtless choke on the last two words of that battle cry.

Let us at least agree on "No King!"

Let us also be prepared, trained, and patient -- but holding on ready. Let us never cede the moral high ground nor become the monsters we fight. But if our enemies insist upon it, let us fight for and let us win the restoration of the Founders' Republic.

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

On the efficacy of passive resistance in the face of the collectivist beast. . .

Had the Japanese got as far as India, Gandhi's theories of "passive resistance" would have floated down the Ganges River with his bayoneted, beheaded carcass. -- Mike Vanderboegh.

In the future . . .

When the histories are written, “National Rifle Association” will be cross-referenced with “Judenrat.” -- Mike Vanderboegh to Sebastian at "Snowflakes in Hell"

"Smash the bloody mirror."

If you find yourself through the looking glass, where the verities of the world you knew and loved no longer apply, there is only one thing to do. Knock the Red Queen on her ass, turn around, and smash the bloody mirror. -- Mike Vanderboegh

From Kurt Hoffman over at Armed and Safe.

"I believe that being despised by the despicable is as good as being admired by the admirable."

From long experience myself, I can only say, "You betcha."

"Only cowards dare cringe."

The fears of man are many. He fears the shadow of death and the closed doors of the future. He is afraid for his friends and for his sons and of the specter of tomorrow. All his life's journey he walks in the lonely corridors of his controlled fears, if he is a man. For only fools will strut, and only cowards dare cringe. -- James Warner Bellah, "Spanish Man's Grave" in Reveille, Curtis Publishing, 1947.

"We fight an enemy that never sleeps."

"As our enemies work bit by bit to deconstruct, we must work bit by bit to REconstruct. Be mindful where we should be. Set goals. We fight an enemy that never sleeps. We must learn to sleep less." -- Mike H. at What McAuliffe Said

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.